Features

The Stony Hill Four Corners Association held a community tag sale on Sunday, September 15, to benefit Hawleyville Volunteer Fire & Rescue Company. The Stony Hill Four Corners (SH4C) Association comprises businesses along and around Stony Hill Road betw...

Ray Cooney has long been considered one of the most successful practitioners of the French style farce on the English stage, winning himself the nickname “The English Feydeau” (the French master of the comedies of infidelity involving multiple doors, beds, and mistresses). In particular, Cooney’s "Move Over Mrs Markham" and "Run For Your Wife" are performed regularly by local theater groups looking to entertain the homefolks. After Ray’s son Michael became a successful screenwriter, they came up with a joint project called "Tom, Dick and Harry," which opened last weekend at The Little Theater. Town Players of Newtown are offering performances, under the direction of Gene Golaszewski.

Following months of planning, events related to the second annual Newtown Arts Festival have begun. Three events had been held as of Tuesday night, three more weeknight events are still ahead, leading to a huge two-day event September 21-22 at Fairfield Hills. Held on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in the courtyard behind NYA Sports & Fitness Center at Fairfield Hills, children, teens and adults were treated to three hours of free events that offered a hint of what would be coming during the next week. Arts Festival Chair Terry Sagedy said on September 15 that all of the available spots for the event had been filled. It was a good start for the volunteers who have been working to create events that will interest people of all ages and interests.

Sherman Players President Robin Frome has taken on the challenge of staging one of Jean Genet’s plays, "The Maids," to an audience whose capacity for alarm is generally limited to the likes of Miley Cyrus. In his Director’s Notes, Frome rightly points out that he has gotten a great effort from the three fine actresses, and that they worked hard to “capture the genre” of the play, and bring forth the “emotional pain” of the “absurdist characters.” The production opened on Friday the 13th, and continues weekends until October 5.

A stream restoration project at Dickinson Park, funded primarily through grants, included several phases of work ending with streamside plantings in recent days. Native shrubs and trees now line the banks of the waterway within the Elm Drive-Brushy Hill Road town park.

Kenneth Stroud is a mild man, with a ready smile and even at age 93, blue eyes that sparkle. His handshake is firm and while the years threaten to bend him in half, his stride is steady. A deacon in the Catholic Church for 36 years, the native Englishman does not have the demeanor of a man who harbors memories that would raise the eyebrows of the boldest soldier.
But for three and a half years of his life the question for Mr Stroud was always, “What’s next?”
Captured by the Japanese in 1942, just after the British forces in Singapore surrendered, the young Royal Air Force (RAF) Leading Aircraftsman would find himself shipped ultimately to the Indonesian island of Haruku, in the Banda Sea off of New Guinea.